Far to Go - By Alison Pick Page 0,33

nobody could see it; the hole was invisible, as was the pain, the excruciating near-physical pain she was in. By comparison, she’d told Marta, the birth had been nothing, a tickle between her legs, a trickle of blood. Whereas after the baby died she could not turn over in bed or her severed heart would fall out of her chest cavity. She lay on her back with her breast ripped open while the wolves bloodied their snouts in her grieving.

Dasha brought her toast. Marta kept Pepik away. Pavel tried to carry on as if nothing were wrong. Anneliese was alone with the weight of her baby’s death, and it was simply too much. She couldn’t bear it.

It was Marta who’d found Anneliese unconscious in the tub. Marta still shuddered to think of it, Anneliese’s skin sallow, as though she was made of wax, her small breasts loose and exposed. Her neck had lolled back at a terrible angle that Marta had trouble forgetting. And there, on her wrist . . .

Marta had been the one who’d turned the spigot off, who’d stopped the bleeding, wrapped the gash in gauze. She’d been the one who’d stayed with Anneliese, nursing her back to health, telling Pavel that his wife was sick with influenza. This was when the bond between the women had formed.

Put another way, Anneliese owed Marta her life. The two of them never mentioned this but Marta felt it was always there between them, asserting itself, as the unspoken tends to. And it would change things in ways neither one could imagine.

Pepik had run back towards them and was leaping about like a little leprechaun, making whirring and clicking noises and flapping his arms. Then he stood still on one foot, his arm aloft holding an imaginary bayonet, pretending to be the statue at the centre of the town square. He said to Marta, gravely, “I got baptized. But it’s a secret from Tata. We made a pact.” And he made a motion of tying his top lip to his bottom, as he had recently learned to do with his shoelaces.

Marta saluted. “Yes, sir!” she said. “I will eat the secret and swallow the key, sir.” This was as much for Anneliese’s benefit as it was for Pepik’s, but she pretended all her attention was on the boy. She took her house key from the folds of her skirt and tipped her head back as though to swallow it, sliding the key at the last moment down her sleeve.

“Where did it go?” Pepik gaped at her, wide-eyed.

Anneliese kneaded her own shoulder and said to herself absently, “I had no idea how tense I was in there. I’m exhausted!”

“I gobbled it up,” Marta told Pepik. She patted her belly.

Pepik said, “Yum.”

The afternoon was waning, the long light lending everything a hint of heaven. They turned the corner and saw Mr. Goldstein coming out of his tailor’s shop. He smiled at Pepik. “How’s the lamed vovnik?”

“Fine-thank-you-and-how-are-you?”

Mr. Goldstein laughed. “Remember? A lamed vovnik is someone very important to the world. Someone on whom the world depends.” He cupped Pepik’s head with his palm, rocked it gently back and forth. “Remember I told you?”

Mr. Goldstein crinkled the corners of his eyes, but Marta thought he seemed tired, worn down. Despite his sunny nature the occupation must be getting to him. He raised his hand to show he was in a hurry, but before he rushed off he let Pepik twist the point of his long beard.

Marta looked at Pepik’s face, the flush of pure gladness. This was the gift of childhood, she thought. To be thoroughly delighted by small things. He was throwing himself into the air, making birdlike chirping noises, happy for the first time in weeks. It was like something in that bit of holy water had actually bought him time, had worked to hold some demon at bay. He looked as though he really had been saved.

Now that Sophie was gone, the shopping and cooking fell to Marta. Anneliese said they would hire someone new as soon as things were back to normal. Marta didn’t mind helping out, but coupled with her duties with Pepik, it meant she had twice as much work and often fell behind schedule. So it was that on November 9 it was late afternoon by the time she returned from the grocer. Dusk was already falling. She cooked hurriedly—česneková polévka using leftover garlic, vepřové for Anneliese—and ate alongside the Bauers, but she got up from the